Saving the Family Jewels
One fairly long (over a year) Caregiver stint for a loved one and the family assets could all go….
Caregivers Talk
Come to my informative talk and be ready for the role you’ll probably take on, as Caregiver, in your lifetime.
Burial at Berry….
It was as still as could be in Berry Cemetery (yes, someone knew that name would get a reaction), off a dirt road in Denmark, Maine, where I’d gone this past Saturday, in June, to be part of the funeral assembly for my latest cousin who’d gone the route of Alzheimer’s. The sound of the…
Paul Wesley Gates and Colleen Mellor Marry After 33 Years
Mark Patinkin, a top journalist at Rhode Island’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Providence Journal, interviewed me and wrote up Paul’s and my story about our wedding this past December 16, 2023. He found our story intriguing—the kind in which others would be interested. We were 83 and 78 years of age and we’d been together in an…
Humor’s a Big Winner in Boomerrrang
The photo is my guest talk at Westminster Unitarian before 3 realtor groups. I’ve been out there, talking up my new book, Boomerrrang, and in all my talks, there’s great interest. People tell me they LOVE the humor. (See the reviews of “Boomerrrang: The Amazing Journey…” on Amazon.) I’m thrilled they’re enjoying my guest-speaking, because…
Don’t Let Them Tell You (Caregivers) Otherwise:
A Caregiver’s First Duty and Commitment Reflecting over this past year, I am mindful of how very fortunate Paul and I have been. My decision to place Paul in a long-term care facility was a wrenching one; I was so very afraid; I wanted him safe but I didn’t want him staring at institutional walls…
Why You Should Want Boomerrrang…..
Going to find your dream home? In another state? Think you’re done with Rhode Island–the winter weather..the high taxes…the poor roads. This is the plan of so many Rhode Islanders bent on finding their own perfect place…their dream home. But often, those plans change as they realize there are no perfect places…that perhaps they just…
What You’ll Get in Boomerrrang!
Boomerrrang begins with a crash. And then there’s an explosion. After Paul’s horrific accident, his broken neck, his “death” due to choking, post-surgery, his ending up in ICU, and his frightening cognitive changes, I had simply endured all I was going to take from his very arrogant neurosurgeon. My women friends (some with Southern accents)…
A Lesson My Aging Mother Taught Me
It had been brutally hot that summer. And throughout the state, towns and cities baked in the sun’s punishing rays. My mother’s half acre, bordering the West Warwick/Coventry line, was parched and arid but that didn’t stop her from hiring two sketchy-looking individuals to prune the forsythia bushes on her property. Why? She intended…
Full Blown War
From “The Asheville Experiment” I’d put up this neurosurgeon’s arrogance for weeks, and I was simply having no more of it. Friends told me “Oh, just let him go…They’re all like that” (neurosurgeons, that is). In other words, it was sort of expected that with their level of skill, we in the public were supposed…
